Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers (11 October 1758 – 2 March 1840) was a German astronomer and physician. He was born in Arbergen near Bremen and studied medicine at Göttingen, where he also learned mathematics from Abraham Kästner. While still a student, in 1779 he devised a better method for calculating comet orbits.
After finishing his studies in 1780, Olbers practiced medicine in Bremen, but he also turned the upper floor of his house into an observatory to study the stars at night. In 1800 he joined a group of 24 astronomers, sometimes called the “celestial police,” who were looking for new planets in the Solar System.
Olbers discovered the asteroid Pallas on 28 March 1802 and Vesta on 29 March 1807. He suggested that the asteroid belt consisted of remnants from a destroyed planet, although today most scientists think Jupiter’s gravity prevented such a planet from forming.
In 1815 Olbers discovered a periodic comet, now known as 13P/Olbers. He is also famous for Olbers’s paradox, published in 1823 (and refined in 1826), which argues that the night sky should be bright if the universe were infinite and eternal—yet it is dark at night.
He helped the young mathematician Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel publish work on Halley’s Comet in 1804. Olbers received several honors, including being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1804. He died in Bremen at the age of 81, having been married twice and leaving one surviving son. A statue in Bremen honors his memory.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:35 (CET).